The End of the Road
by trackstar777
Summary: Immortality is seen by many as a gift, to never die and face the eternal silence. What it is, however, is a curse. Living on, longer than anything should. Waiting. Waiting for one day, the miracle of death to take you. The year is 5387. Character death and a mildly graphic scene.


Disclaimer: I own nothing

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What happens when you reach the end of the road? Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. You are utterly alone. Isolated. On this planet you used to call home.

The year is 5387. The change in the sun's size has caused conditions on the planet to become too harsh for life to exist. Once-green hills, filled with wind blown grasses are now barren wastelands, cracked and lifeless. Where beautiful, age-old mountains once stood, only rubble remains. The oceans are long gone, dried up skeletons the only reminder of the vast expanse of the sea. Radiation bombards the surface, scorching the ground and grinding the existence out of all things. Except one.

Shadow remained. The sole survivor of this once-beautiful planet. His immortality not only kept him alive, but healed him from the cosmic fire that tortured him until the end of every day.

The others are gone. All of them. Whether to the planet or some accidental injury. The Chaos Emeralds are lost forever, taken. Without them, Shadow could never leave. He had tried many times to kill himself, to end the pain, even going so far as to shoot himself in the head, but every time he would wake up hours later with a blood stain and a headache. Eventually, he ran out of bullets.

Sonic was the first to go. An alien race, calling themselves the Cie'et, had come to enslave humanity. The minds of the humans making them ideal builders for the aliens' ships.

They had come down in force. Taking half the population in a matter of months. Anything not human they captured was exterminated. Sonic had been shot by one of the Cie'et soldiers wielding a stunner. When it identified the hedgehog, it killed him. Right there. In front of everyone.

Tails wasn't faring well after the loss of his adoptive brother. He followed not long after that. The same way Sonic had.

Knuckles was guarding the Master Emerald on Angel Island. A Cie'et battleship descended from the sky, picking up the Emerald's energy signature. It laid the island to waste. The Master Emerald was shattered, its pieces cascaded down into the water, then the island itself, blackened and broken, fell from the sky and plummeted into the ocean.

Soon, the others fell to the ever-advancing ranks of the Cie'et. So many dead. So much loss. It was a wonder Shadow was able to withstand it all. One thing kept him going. Kept him sane.

Her.

But that soon changed.

The human resistance was down to only a few thousand people. Surrounded by a slowly-enclosing ring of seemingly unstoppable enemies.  
Blaze and Shadow found themselves caught in a crossfire between the Cie'et and the remaining humans. Bullets and energy blasts shot past over their heads as they hid behind the wreckage of an old car.

"We have to get out of here, Shadow," Blaze had told him, the anxiety evident in her eyes, "they're going to overrun our position."

"We can't, Blaze. It's too dangerous out there," Shadow returned, worriedly, "What if you get hit?"

"I'm not," Blaze said, arrogantly as she sprang up and ran through the wreckage lining the street, dancing away from bullets as they shot past her. She made it to the barricade set up by the humans and vaulted over, landing next to one of the new recruits, startling him.

_Bang_

Blaze looked down at the hole the soldier's gun left in her stomach, the shock already setting in. She looked up at Shadow, her eyes, normally as calm and steely as ice, were now gaping with fear, "Shadow..." she said, weakly, before collapsing to the cold, cracked asphalt of the ruined street.

"Blaze!" Shadow screamed, running as fast as he could to her side, dodging debris and obstacles, ignoring the heated crossfire being exchanged around him. Nothing else mattered anymore.

"I'm here," Shadow said, comfortingly, as he knelt down at her side, though panic was starting to show through his calm facade, "Please, don't go," he begged, grabbing hold of her hands with his, more for his own comfort than hers.

"S-Sorry, Shadow," Blaze apologized, raggedly, looking down at the crimson-red blood flowing out of her wound, "I don't think I'm gonna be able to walk away from this one." Her eyes filled to the brim with tears, she blinked and let one escape. It rolled down her lavender face, onto her snow-white muzzle. Shadow caught it with his thumb before it fell to the bloody asphalt.

"Please," he said quietly, looking into her eyes, the emotions too strong for him to hold back any longer. Tears started to form, the first ones since Maria.

"Please."

She opened her mouth to speak, but words were slow to come, he could feel her slipping away, "Shadow...I...I love..."

Her eyes, once as full of burning life as an inferno, were now empty, void of everything. Her chest stopped heaving its ragged breaths. Her body went limp. The blood stopped flowing out of the hole left by the soldier's bullet. She was gone.

"Please," Shadow whispered to her lifeless body, tears rolled down his face and landed on her crimson stained clothing, "not again." He bent down and kissed her lifeless lips one last time, begging them to return it, but they never did. He finally pulled away, letting go of a sob that had been building in his throat. He gently placed her head back down on the cracked asphalt and slowly rose to his feet, head hung low. His back was to the soldiers, some of which had stopped firing and were watching the tragic events unfold behind the barricade.

Shadow's expression turned. Tears stopped flowing, the lump in his throat disappeared. An aura of pure Chaos enveloped him, one so powerful, even his inhibitor rings couldn't hold it back.

"You...will...pay," Shadow spoke, his voice laced with a demonic reverberation, emanating pure hate. He was enveloped in a flash of green light and was gone. All of a sudden, many more flashes of green appeared behind the barricade, simultaneously, accompanied by the sound of firearms and the horrific screams of men. When it finally subsided, Shadow was standing in the middle of a scene of pure carnage. The mutilated bodies of soldiers were scattered around him in a sea of torn flesh and spilled blood. But Shadow didn't stop there. He massacred every life form he came upon; man, woman, or child, it made no difference to him. Thousands killed by his hand in a thirst for retribution. The Cie'et, seeing that their cattle were being slaughtered by an insatiable killer, left before they lost any more soldiers to his ruinous fury, seeking a new harvest ground.

The year was 3268.


End file.
